


Exhaust

by PatchworkPoltergeist



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Study, F/M, One Shot, Utimate Enemy continuity, rocky relationships, wheelchairs and the art of motorcycle maintenance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-07 23:21:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1917897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PatchworkPoltergeist/pseuds/PatchworkPoltergeist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A decade after the near-disastrous encounter with Dan Phantom, Kitty and Johnny decide where to go from here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exhaust

_Everyone crashes. Some get back on. Some don't. Some can't._

  
\- Author Unknown  
  


* * *

  
  
  
He doesn’t even look up when she comes in. But to tell the truth, that doesn’t surprise her much.  
  
After all, Johnny’s never had eyes for anything except chrome and rubber and engine oil when he was with his bike. Even before the… incident happened. He never hears a thing in that garage of his except for little clinks of metal on metal, the growl of an engine, and occasionally, the thin sound of a forty year old guitar solo trying its best to be heard through a broken radio.

So it only makes sense he doesn’t hear the clicking of her new heels (bought _specifically_ for him) upon the garage floor. It makes sense he doesn’t hear the subtle hint for attention with discreet coughs and “ahems.”  
  
He doesn't hear. Of course he doesn't hear. He’s hardly heard her in almost a decade. For years all she's seen of him is the back of his head while he reassembles spokes and motors, and...and recalibrates the engine mechanisms or whatever.  
  
Why should tonight be any different? Why should she even bother to be disappointed anymore? Kitty's an idiot _._ She has to be. Only idiots get stuck with guys that don’t even give them the time of day. Only idiots stay.  
  
Kitty feels a little guilty thinking about him like this. Especially when she brushes against the wheelchair, sitting empty while Johnny floats on his back so he can get a better view working on his bike. But she’s been reasonable all the way through this ugly situation. She’s been patient. She’s been understanding. She’s been supportive. Really. She has.  
  
She gets that he’s been feeling sore, in more ways than one. Who wouldn’t be feeling like that after the ghost kid did what he did to him? She gave him time to cope. She gave him time to be alone. She gave him his space. And she gave him hours and hours of her time and effort helping to find the spare parts he wanted, even though she knew rebuilding was pointless. Did she want to go out and have fun sometimes? Sure she did. But she stayed and ruined three pairs of shoes--three!--hunting for spare parts instead.  
  
It's not too much to ask that he at least speaks to her every once in a while, is it? It isn’t too horrible for her to be just a little angry at him for ignoring her, right?  
  
Anyone would be a little bit frustrated if they’d done what she’d done for Johnny. Most ghosts in her situation would have taken off right at the sound of metal screaming, groaning under Dan Phantom’s vice grip as he tossed the bike over his shoulder like it was a scrap of paper.  
  
They wouldn’t have stuck around long enough to see him fly from the seat and hear the terrible crack as Johnny smashed against the wall. They wouldn’t have stayed to see Johnny trying stand, only to see his shaky legs crumple against that awful, awful, _awful_ , ghostly wailing wall of sound crash into the bike, and the bike smash into Johnny.  
  
Most ghosts actually would have just cut and run spotting Phantom in the distance, knowing the rumors about sudden and terrible change to the former halfa. They _certainly_ would have run if they knew the gossip wasn't even close to how awful it really was.

Around the Zone, a lot of ghosts say that the wail’s the worst of the worst, but ghosts who say that obviously never faced it themselves. Not like Kitty has. Certainly not like Johnny has. If they had, they’d know that the wail is _nothing_ compared to the low, sadistic laughter that came after it.  
  
But no. Instead of making a break for it, she stayed. She stayed through all of it. She stays now. Even when it’s probably really, really, really, _really_ stupid to do so when he barely even knows she’s alive. (Well, not _alive_ , but you know.)  
  
It’s probably rotten of her to go bringing all this up. Like Johnny suddenly owes a whole bunch to her, using his crash against him in her favor. She tries not to be so horrible about this. She’s tries not to be mad at him, but it’s not really working.  
  
Kitty almost considers smacking him upside the head like she used to do. She considers saying something to him, shouting at him, screaming at him until she gets an apology or a look of regret or until Johnny starts to shout back. Some kind of reaction. Some acknowledgement of her existence.  
  
Then she remembers what happened the last time she’d tried that. He only looked at her through the corner of his eye as she ran him through the wringer, until finally she pointed out that it was stupid to try and fix up a bike that he couldn’t even ride.

And Johnny stopped. He turned and looked at her then. Kitty wished he hasn't.

Even now, Kitty’s not sure how to explain the slightly angry, but mostly hurt look in his eyes. She remembers how hollow his face looked, what was left of the thinning greasy hair clinging pathetically on the sides of his head. Then he’d just turned around without a word, and went back to setting up the brakes. The Shadow had growled at her when she retreated out of the garage, but these days his Shadow growled at everything anyway because it couldn’t do much else.  
  
So now she just decides not to say anything to him.  
  
Instead, she just stands there with her heel in a puddle of oil. She watches Johnny work, stretched out and hovering just above a tarp. Kitty has to admit, as much as she resents that hunk of metal for stealing all her love and making her Johnny this way... the bike looks good. It looks real good, considering the shape it was in.  
  
It _should_ look good. He’s done nothing but fuss over it the past nine years. Now it looks exactly like it did before the accident. The frame’s nice and smooth, the wires are rewired, the lights have been replaced, and the finished paint job shines in the garage light. The green flames blowing around the number 13 glow in the dark. That part's new, she thinks, but it's been so long she can't know for sure.

She's heard the sputters, then the coughs, then finally the smooth growls and purrs of an engine eager to rip asphalt. Kitty wonders if it actually runs. If it does run, she wonders how Johnny can tell without actually riding it. Can he tell just by looking and listening to it? Can he read that hunk of metal better than he can read her?  
  
Kitty leans down a little to get a better look at what he’s doing. Not that she really knows exactly _what_ he’s doing, but it kinda looks like he’s fixing up the exhaust pipe. Figures. He’s been focusing on that stupid pipe for the past two months, trying to work with different models until he could find just the right one. Really, it was just a pipe, how many could there be? It couldn’t really matter what year it was from, right? A pipe’s a pipe, but whatever. He must have found the right one if he was finally attaching it.  
  
There still isn’t a very good view of him. Even when she crouches down to bike-level, all she can really see is Johnny's back as he shifts his weight to swivel around to his stomach and finish shining the exhaust pipe. She tries to focus on the pipe and not let her eyes wander to his dangling and useless legs.She watches him finish the last spit-and-polish details and scramble his way back into his wheelchair. He’s never liked it before when Kitty tried to help ease him in, so instead she reaches out to hold the chair steady, so it doesn’t swerve out from under him (it’s not supposed to do either of those things, but with Johnny’s luck, you never know).  
  
As he realigns, the Shadow slithers out from under the wheels and into Johnny’s lap, shifting and twisting so that it moves with him, positioned so that the black mass blocks the sight of how twisted and awkward his limbs are. Most times you could almost think there was nothing wrong with his legs. Except for when he gets in and out and you notice the legs they don’t move right, they just kinda flop and fumble around. It’s hard not to notice how the rest of him floats nice and smooth, while the bottom half drags like an anchor.  
  
None of them wants to see that.  
  
When Johnny finally manages to settle himself and the Shadow eases into the form of an inky blanket, he wheels back to have a look at his handiwork. Johnny’s mouth is still set in a tight straight line, but as Kitty rests a hand on his shoulder, she can feel the tension ease out of him. Not so steely and taut anymore.

When he reaches out to rev the engine, when his motorbike’s purr fills the garage and the exhaust flows quiet and easy into the air, there’s something like a smile on his face. From the waist up, almost looks like his old self (if Kitty imagines he still has that old heap of greasy hair). For a second, Johnny looks like Johnny--happily chilled out, but wildly revved under the skin. Like he can go anywhere he wants to go and do anything he wants to do and there's not a damn thing anybody can do about it.   
  
The second passes. The calm Kitty felt in him melts down to melancholy and the almost-smile sinks down, down to a straight, unhappy line.

Johnny stares at his bike a few moments more, then swivels around to look Kitty straight in the face for the first time since the accident. His voice sounds a little rough, and she isn’t sure if that’s just because he hasn’t been talking much, or if it’s something else. “So. Now what?”  
  
Kitty frowns. That’s… actually a very good question. Yeah, it’s supposed to be rhetorical, but still, it’s a good question.  
  
All he’s really done the past decade is focus on motorcycle repairs and not much else. She wonders now if that’s the real reason why he took so long putting it back together. Making sure he had the exact number of nuts and bolts and coils he started out with, making sure nothing was even an inch out of place. Perfection takes a long time and maybe was the whole point. Maybe fixing the bike was all he could do, because that was all he could fix.  
  
Now that the bike's all fixed up, Johnny finally puts his best girl in the spotlight, and his girl almost wishes that he’d go back to ignoring her. She’s not really sure what to do with his attention now. It's not like they can go out and make a great beautiful scene like they did before, not without a ride. And anyway, the world's not much fun to be in after Dan Phantom. But more importantly, watching Johnny stare at her the way he is, sagging and listless, feels so much worse than being ignored.  
  
Once, a million and a half years ago, curled on Johnny’s ratty old sofa in his ratty old house, watching his ratty, black-and-white TV, he’d told her that his motorcycle was the first and only thing he ever really owned. It was the only thing that was just his and nobody else’s. And as he told her, this snaggly grin just took over all of his face, so big it ended up making Kitty smile too. He was always a dork.   
  
Now, looking at that same motorcycle, built back to its prime, never to be ridden again, Kitty feels kind of ridiculous for getting so mad before. Getting mad at lifeless hunks of metal is something that fickle, unreasonably jealous teenage girls do. People like that might get mad because a motorbike got more attention than they did, but people like that also wouldn’t stick around as long as she has. Certainly other ghostly teenagers wouldn’t, not when they were still pent up with selfish rage and angst. Kitty isn’t a teenager anymore, nor is she fickle or unreasonably jealous.  
  
For some reason, this thought suddenly makes Kitty feel old. Very old. A little tired, too. She’d have thought just being cheesed off would tire somebody out, but _not_ being mad is so much more exhausting. It’s like a wave of something heavy and pungent has traveled up and out of her, and into the Ghost Zone. Maybe she ought to sit down or something. Even floating around is starting to feel exhausting. She can’t imagine why, though.  
  
It isn’t like all her anger's gone, though. Sure, all that fierce and bitter rage that used to simmer inside her was no longer there (funny how she didn’t notice any of that before it left) but there's still some mad left in her. It sits hard and heavy at her core. But why is that still there? What’s she got to still feel so mad about?  
  
What a stupid question.  
  
She thinks of Johnny’s question of what to do and she remembers something. A certain suggestion from a certain someone with a fondness for boxes who had to be way more furious than she ever was.  
  
“…I think I have an idea.”  
  
Johnny’s miserable expression turns to a confused one. “What kind of an idea?”  
  
She leans on the bike and points a painted nail. “Listen: none of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for Dan. And I don’t just mean what happened to the bike, or what happened to your legs, either. I mean what he did to the Zone, what he’s done to the living world. He went and tore the heart out of everything. It’s all rotted now, both worlds, inside and out. And he did it all.”  
  
“Yeah. I already knew _that_. So? What about it?”  
  
“So, why don’t we try and do something about it?”  
  
Johnny stares at her for a moment, looking for a sarcastic twitch on her face. When he can’t find one, he starts to think about it. The more he thinks about it, the more a bright, malevolent light seems to fill his eyes. The almost-smile returns to his face, longer and darker than before.  
  
The Shadow twists in and around itself in a convulsing, inky riot of joy.  
  
That stupid Shadow could always express what was going inside of Johnny better than Johnny could.


End file.
